Tim, I think you are GREATLY overstating the point when you say ” Almost all office documents are just paragraphs of text, with some bold and some italics and some lists and some tables and some pictures. Almost all spreadsheets are numbers and labels, with some sums and averages and pivots and simple algebra. Almost all presentations are lists of bullet points with occasional pictures. The capabilities of ODF and O12X are essentially identical for all this basic stuff.”

If they are so similar it’ll be a breeze to write a converter to take one XML file format and convert it into another, right Tim? Hey, Tim, wanna come work for the Office team? I think we have an office open for a co-inventor of XML. Maybe Sun Microsystems can give you a leave of absence. Or, heck, take a vacation and work on it on your three weeks off a year. If it’s so easy someone with your skills should be able to finish the job in a few weeks, no?

But, back to reality, thanks for telling me to do more work. I’m passing the request along.